Second-person plural forms in World Englishes A Corpus-based Study

Outline

 Definition and classification of second-person plural forms

 Theoretical background

 Research questions

 Methodology and the corpus - GloWbe

 Results

 Conclusion Second-person plural forms

"Frankly, if ask me, are all mad." (IE G daft.ie) Second-person plural forms (2PP)

 Definition:

Second person pronominal form (you) to which some linguistic material is added in order to be interpreted as a plural in the context.

Examples: yous, yez, yinz, you guys, y'all, y'uns, etc.

 Linguistic material: morpheme or NP => classification Classification of second-person plural forms

1. Morphological 2. Analytic

Regular plural suffixation: You + NP (pl.) NP + -s (or –z)

 You guys  Yous  You all (y'all, yall)

 Youse  You ones (y'uns, yinz)  Yiz  You lot  Yez  You girls

 Yus  You fellas  (…)  (…) Classification of second-person plural forms

3. Double and triple marking

Combination of categories 1 and 2

 Youse guys

 Yous all

 Youse lot

 All youse fellas Theoretical background

 2PPs and the literature

 Suffixed forms => Irish origin (Gaelic 18th century), especially reduced-vowel variants (yiz/yez) (Wright 1961; Cassidy 1954, Gramley and Pätzold 1992, Algeo 2001, Corrigan 2010)

 Analytic forms? (work in progress)

 2PPs in dictionaries and grammars

 Hardly mentioned because "non-standard"

 Very short entries or footnotes (see next slide)

 No mention in learner's dictionaries (but Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 2005) 2PPs in dictionaries and grammars

 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al. 1999: 330) “The dialectal form yous is a second-person plural pronoun, filling the gap left by the absence of number contrast for you in modern standard English: am sick to death of yous – all yous do is fight and ruck and fight - do you ever see a house like Albert? (conv)”

 Oxford Dictionary on-line

 Collins English Dictionary on-line Functionality of Codification of Plurality

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?t erm=Youse Research questions

 Do know enough about 2PPs in English?

 Frequencies and distribution

 Functions: is it all about number marking?

 Collocates and patterns: semantic preference? Semantic prosody?

 Pragmatics

 Is there a grammaticalisation/pragmaticalisation process going on?

 Are there any world-wide trends in the use of 2PPs? The corpus: GloWbe

 1.9 billion words

 Mark Davies (Brigham University), 2013

 Snapshot corpus

 20 varieties of English

 Inner Circle (Kachru 1985) - 6 varieties: AU, IE, GB, US, NZ, CA

 Outer Circle (Kachru 1985) - 14 varieties: IN, LK, PK, BD, SG, MY, PH, HK, ZA, NG, GH, KE, TZ, JM

 Websites + blogs Methodology

 Qualitative analysis of instances of 2PPs (Frequencies, functions, syntax and semantics) in a single variety

 Comparison between varieties

 Comparison between Inner and Outer Circle

 Control sample (you)

 Collocates and patterns => AntConc

 Statistics

 T-score (Variety vs Average; IC vs OC)

 Chi-square (2PP vs you) Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Frequencies

 Most frequent variants: yous and youse (yous(e)) (0.3 pmw)  All 20 varieties show instances of yous(e)  More frequent in IC rather than OC (0.34 vs 0.09 pmw)  IC: more frequent in IE and NZ (0.8* pmw, 0.5 pmw) Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Functions

 Plural - more than two I adore yous (GB G)  Singular - emphatic/empathetic (see pragmatics)

 - Are yous the new librarian? - Who? - Yous. (IE G)  Possessive - determiner/pronoun You made my day by helping realize how much greater my world view is than yous (US G) It ain't worth yous health (MY G) Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Distribution of functions

 IC => PL < SG < Poss(A/P)

 OC => PL < Poss(A/P) < SG [institutional function playing a role?] Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Collocates  Prepositions: of* (cf patterns), to*, for* => Benefactive (cf. Pragmatics)  Verbs: keep*, hope*, love, wish, enjoy, will Keep yous posted Hope yous enjoy catching up with Brian (AU) Love youse all!  Conjunctions: if*  Negation*

 Structures  Partitive: some of yous, those of yous, any of yous, the two of youse  Hypothetical/conditional (+ negation): if yous don't do it now, you'll never do it again Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Semantic traits associated with 2PPs

 Benefactive

 Involvement

 Commitment

 Future

 Condition (negative)

=> Pragmatics of 2PPs Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Pragmatics

 Identification

 Attention-getting devices: Oh youse. Stop giving her a hard time. (US) No more games yous. (US)

 Social categorisation (yous(e) + NPpl.) => associativeness/negative connotation Youse Anglo-bastards (AU)

 Expression of positive and negative politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987) Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Pragmatics

 Expression of positive politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987) => Face enhancement

 Compliments: Yous fuckin' rock (US)

 Congratulations: Well done to yous and more success (IE)

 Gratitude: Thank youse (IE)

 Blessings: May God give yous strength (GB)

 good wishes: Good luck to yous (GB)

 Forgiveness: I forgive yous (MY)

 Participation/sharing: I'm with youse guys on this (SG) Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Pragmatics

 Expression of negative politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987) Avoiding face-threatening acts – Rituals of departure (Leech 2014) Main semantic trait: promising (involvement + future) Linguistic expression: routinised expressions and formulae

 See youse there (AU)

 Let youse know (IE)

 See youse (US)

 Will keep yous posted (GB) Results (suffixed 2PPs)

 Differences between yous(e) and standard you

 Yous(e) more likely to be plural than you + pragmatically charged

 You more likely to be singular and impersonal (generally not pragmatically charged) Conclusion

So, when do we use suffixed 2PPs?

 Express plurality

 Emphatic identification of referents (or class of referents)

 Positive politeness

 Negative politeness

 Spoken interaction => Social comity

Can we talk about pragmaticalisation? Yes Grammatical marker (PL) > Pragmatic marker (Emphasis + Politeness) Eastfallslocal.com Thank you! Questions? Bibliography

 Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some Language Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Cheshire, J. 1996. “Syntactic variation and the concept of prominence”, in Klemola, J., Kytö, M., & Rissanen, M. Speech past and present: Studies in English dialectology in memory of Ossi Ihalainen. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. pp. 1-17.  Conklin, K. and Schmitt, N. 2012. “The Processing of Formulaic Language” in Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 32. pp. 45 – 61.  Corbett, G. G. 2000. Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Givón, T. 2001. Syntax: An Introduction, vol. I. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  Leech, G. 2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.